


the only ones who know

by benditlikepress



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Family, Memories, Ziva's diaries, gratuitous summer of secret sex mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benditlikepress/pseuds/benditlikepress
Summary: Tony and Ziva revisit past memories after a box of diaries arrive in Paris.
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 71





	the only ones who know

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I've read fics about this before or just talked about it with people a lot (I've searched but can't find any though I feel like I've read some with this plot?), so if you've written a fic about them being sent ziva's diaries and reading them I thank you for being a muse for my own interpretation x

“Can’t believe I never knew about these. All in your secret office?”

Ziva looked down at the boxes surrounding her on the bedroom floor and wondered how they must look from Tony’s position stood over her crouching form.

They’d arrived this afternoon after Ziva had got home from work, sent with a note from Ellie telling them to visit soon. Ellie had tracked the delivery but it had been delayed for unknown reasons, and after a brief few days of panic that Ziva's personal and intensely private diaries were being passed around a sorting office they'd finally shown up on the doorstep a week late.

“Seven years worth, plus a little extra.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I never saw you as a journal-er.”

Ziva smiled and looked up at him. "I never intended for anybody to know outside of myself and Odette. It was a way for me to organise my thoughts. I had always written them, but they became more significant to me as time went on – my entries were fairly sporadic until I became an agent. Sometimes I could go a little while between visits, just stopping by to write notes on cases. Other times I would be here every day writing."

“God, look at them all.” Tony bent down next to her, looking over the rows and rows of diaries that Ziva had begun to organise onto shelves on the empty bottom half of the bookshelf.

“I suppose there was a lot I was not willing to say anywhere else.”

Ziva picked one out and flicked through it. It was an early diary, written mostly in Hebrew. She saw mention of her father and Mossad and Jenny Shepard: it must have been from not long after she moved to the US.

“Anything about me in these?” Tony’s tone changed, cutting through the atmosphere. Ziva looked at him with incredulity.

“Really?”

“What?”

She smirked at his blinking expression. “You were a recurring theme, Tony. That should not surprise you.”

“Hmm, like the sound of that. Can I?” He did seem genuinely pleased as he signalled the stacks, and Ziva extended her arms in permission.

“The whole of the navy yard has read them by this point, go ahead.”

Tony moved towards the bookshelf and began to scan the dates printed in small letters along the spines.

It was strange, Ziva thought as she watched him move, that they didn’t have much remaining physical evidence that they’d spent so long together. A few photos, carefully protected over the years. It had been difficult to keep hold of them between the many moves across the world, faked deaths, and other circumstances that made sentimental keepsakes difficult.

Tony, for his part, also seemed to be marvelling in how unusual this was as a result. His eyes drawing slowly across them.

“If you are looking for the first time we went undercover, it will be somewhere near the bottom.”

“What do you take me for?” Tony tutted theatrically and continued to scan, before marking his discovery with a hum and picking out a diary. “This is the one.”

He flicked through a couple of pages slowly and Ziva tried to catch the date. After a few moments of silence he cleared his throat.

**_“As far as witnesses go, Nora could not have been more pleasant. It is sad, to me, to think back now to how optimistic she had been about her future. How little we can truly know someone we are so close to. It is a feeling that unites her and I, even in our differing natural states of suspicion and trust. Nora trusts blindly, and it cost her. I struggle to do so, and am often proven right._ **

**_Perhaps the most surprising thing about Nora, though, is that I know this will not deter her in the long run. Not all people close themselves completely after this kind of betrayal. Not someone like her, so willing to see the good in others. I know there is a lesson to learn from this. Perhaps it is a timely one._ **

**_Tony and I ended up sharing a bed last night. He had originally intended to sleep on the couch but I asked him to stay and I think it surprised him - the way I asked. I had tried not to sound desperate though truthfully a part of me was. I am still struggling to sleep through the night most nights, but the company helped. We still are avoiding talking about everything that happened but if he can reach for my hand in the dark I think we are going to be OK."_ **

Tony's voice faded but he continued to read in his head. She hadn't expected him to go straight for Paris, and truthfully she didn't remember much of what she'd written about the trip. She remembered how she'd felt, though: how she'd originally decided to humour Tony and his thinly veiled attempts at making her happy but had soon embraced it, sightseeing and going for dinner and waking up with his arms wrapped around her. It was fragile and mostly unspoken and had only lasted as long as their time there but it had still represented something. A reminder of what had been, and what could be again one day.

"Take any ones out you would like to.” Her voice was quiet and cut through the sobering air, causing Tony to stop reading to look at her.

"Do you not wanna read them?"

"Maybe a couple. Some of them I think I would prefer to keep in the past." She ran her fingers over a collection from 2009. "There are some I would like for you to read, though. I want you to know what I was thinking. Sometimes you deserved an honesty I was not able to give you."

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Maybe not. But I would like you to read them. And I know you cannot resist, either way.”

"Yeah, you're right. I don't think I can.”

"Take your pick." Ziva sat down on the edge of the bed with the Paris diary in her hands, watching as Tony perused them like some kind of strange library. She wondered how differently she would've written them had she known he'd read them one day. They were the one place she was really, truly, candid back then, in a way she struggled to be even with him. When the thought of being so bare with someone was unthinkable - barely capable of acknowledging the thoughts herself outside of those pages, outside of the cases and events that illuminated them, saving the Hebrew for the deepest of secrets.

There was an intimacy in seeing Tony select them, wondering what was guiding his thoughts as he flicked through dates looking for particular editions. The way they both interpreted things: their shared history, often seen from such different angles. She watched intently as his brow furrowed, wondering what dates and moments he deemed the most important.

She really _did_ want him to read them, to get inside her head back then in the way he'd always been desperate to. He knew her, now, as well as a person could ever know somebody else. But back then it had always been a tightrope - a balancing act between wanting him close and being terrified of the implications. In those diaries, she'd allowed herself to ponder. She wondered if he'd thought the same moments significant, if he'd realise the seemingly innocuous interactions that would strike a chord and stick behind her eyes for weeks.

Eventually he turned back to her with a couple in his hands, looking sheepish.

"Weirdest vending machine I've ever been to."

"You have no idea."

He sat down on the bed further up towards the pillows than Ziva, and placed the diaries down carefully between them. He picked up one and ran his hands over it and Ziva noticed how tentative he was being: as though it were real memories he was touching, rather than decades old battered paper. She smiled as he caught her eye in the silence.

“Why did you go straight for Paris?”

She tipped her head as she regarded him, the way his eyes glanced down from her face to the diaries. “You weren’t expecting it?”

“I am not sure where I expected you to look first.”

He puffed out his cheeks in consideration. “It just… I don’t know, I think it was important. Right? Things had been weird for us all the year before, and I think I saw it as kinda like a fresh start. We never really talked about it, though. Guess I’ve always just been curious what you were feeling at that point.”

“I have to confess, when we were first assigned the job I remember feeling apprehensive. I was not sure how things would go – being alone together like that for the first time. I wondered if maybe the way we used to be when we were alone would be different. Awkward, or impossible. Of course, I was at ease as soon as we got to the hotel.”

Ease was a good word for how she’d felt at the time. She knew everyone at NCIS had still been on eggshells around her, as much as they’d tried to hide it. Not Tony, though. For as much as he’d been trying harder than was probably necessary, it was remarkable the way things fell into organic patterns as soon as they were alone.

"When I thought about where I wanted to settle down with Tali I remembered that. No big dramatic romantic feeling just.. being comfortable with each other again without having to work on it. I remember the night we got home I was thinking about the trip and, I guess it's like you said. Hopeful. It was hopeful. A fresh start. That's why I wanted to live here." Ziva nodded in understanding, but Tony seemed to distract himself before she could add anything else. "You said it was about cases, about your own processing. How often did us come into that?"

"Fairly often. Not always in a purposeful way of me mentioning you - often it was a by-product. I would have a thought about the case that made me think of you, and where things stood."

Tony smiled, a little shyly, and looked back down at the diaries on the bed between them. Ziva nodded at him to pick one up and he took the one from the top that had been the first he’d grabbed – one of the first Ziva had written when she’d arrived in the States. Strangely enough, a period of time she remembered the most clearly.

He opened the battered cover and flicked the pages with his thumb.

"This one's all in Hebrew."

Ziva chuckled, having forgotten. "I am sorry - the earlier ones are. I can read some to you, and we can do them properly, if you would like to know more about that time."

"Wait, lemme see if I can test myself."

"You think you will be able to understand?" Ziva asked with amusement, knowing her small Hebrew script would be impossible for a basic speaker to grasp. Still, Tony selected a page and began to pore over it.

“Well, this, right here,” he held the diary up to her, “that says Tony. Right?”

“Why does it not surprise me that you can read your own name?”

“Might come in handy one day.”

“Like right now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Alright, give me that one. This one is English, maybe you will find something that interests you.”

Tony passed Ziva the diary and she glanced over what he’d given her. It was, in fact, a detailed run-down of what happened with Ari. She flicked past it quickly, her desire to discuss the ins and outs of his death never quite on her mind.

She continued on through the rest of the diary, searching for other mentions of Tony's name. She assumed he was doing the same in the one she’d given him: though she knew he was sincere about wanting to read everything, she also knew that even reading just this small selection of diaries cover to cover would take days. Cases where she'd poured out her soul, page upon page of a single significant moment that impacted her.

So, she looked for key dates. Key cases in the history of their relationship.

It wasn’t long before she found one.

“Here you go. This is the one of the first diaries I wrote in the States, actually. From when we first met and started working together.”

“Alright, hit me.”

Ziva cleared her throat and held the book up in front of her. "Um, let’s see. ** _Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo has exceeded every expectation I had of him."_**

"Aww, honey. That's sweet."

**_".. Arrogant, fickle, childish, with an ego so big it rivals only his penchant for sexual innuendo."_ **

"Gee, tell me how you really feel."

**_".. My attraction to him is undeniable, and yet so far he seems to be uninterested in exploring the clear chemistry between us. That, itself, is enough to intrigue me."_ **

“You know I _was_ interested. Right?”

Ziva looked up from the diary at Tony’s tone and smirked. “Yes, I know. I think it is more that I was intrigued that it seemed to make you cautious. I had not expected you to be someone who took work as seriously as you did – or Gibbs’ rules, which I did not yet know about. Of course there was also the situation with Ari, and I.. I am not sure. I think I just misjudged you, which is something which at that time I liked to think did not happen very often.”

More discussion of Ari and her father had her flicking pages until she found her official position at NCIS being established.

_**“Gibbs has not told anybody about my relationship with Ari or the circumstances surrounding his death. I am grateful for this kindness from a near-stranger - I realise the difficulties this would create in trying to form relationships with people who knew Agent Todd. Some of them have difficulty enough accepting me even without this knowledge.** _

**_I am trying to fit in. To learn what is expected of an agent, even if I am not one. The team are humouring me on this. Tony has been helpful, which I admit I was not expecting. Of everyone, he seems to be the person so far who is most comfortable being around me, even it is clear I intimidate him.”_ **

“You were always so sure of that, huh?”

“I still am. There is no need to try to deny it now, after 15 years I think we can put that to bed.”

Tony smiled but it was small, mind evidently on what she’d written. “I didn’t know that. About you feeling like you didn’t fit in. You were always so confident.”

“I expected it before I arrived – it did not affect me especially. I had faith that I would still be able to work with people I was not close to, my concern was more with learning the work itself. But the way you were with me: I was grateful to you for that. Even when we would mock each other, or you poked fun. I saw it as an acceptance. Things were never awkward between us, like it was sometimes with other people in the building."

"I'd love to say that was a conscious decision," Ziva smiled at Tony's hum of thoughtfulness, "I think I just wanted to talk to you. I know the circumstances were crazy, I'd been a little all over the place with the plague and then Ari and Kate. It was just fun, right? It was fun, getting to know you.”

“I would not have been able to deny that even then, though it would have been said through gritted teeth.”

“Your poker face was never as good as you thought it was.”

“A lot of the time it was not a poker face. You could be very irritating when you wanted to be.”

“Only then, huh?”

“You still have your moments.”

“I was playing up to you a lot of the time, I think. I don’t know, I think I just wanted your attention.”

The admission was simple and really, considering where they now were, was barely a ripple, but even so Ziva felt a flutter through her chest for the young girl she was at that time. Shoving anything real towards him down under jokes and arguments. She saw, now, the way he fiddled with a piece of lint on his sock as though remembering how he was back then too.

"If you were writing a diary about me back then, what would it say?"

"Hmm. Probably a stick figure of you with a danger sign over your head."

“I could not have intimidated you _that_ much.”

“You? No. But I had what I think is a very healthy attitude towards keeping a distance from everyone related to Mossad.”

“That lasted very long, yes?”

“One of their officers proved difficult to stay away from.” Tony punctuated with a wink before looking back at the diary on his own lap. “This one’s in English.”

“When is it from?”

Tony smiled, guiltily, and flashed the first page at Ziva. She glanced over the date.

“Ah, of course. Maybe you are predictable after all.”

“I’m just curious, that’s all.”

“Read away.” Ziva gestured the pages and watched Tony scan them before he started to read.

**_“Gibbs has been gone for two months now. Things have been hard - I suppose is it not just his absence, but it still hangs heavy over events that happen._ **

**_Tony is doing a good job. The best any one of us could in the circumstances. I have done my best to support how I can - not just in our interactions outside of work but inside it, too. I am well aware from Mossad of the importance of feeling as though you have somebody on your side._ **

**_Outside of the office, of course, likely has an impact on this too. There is no longer any pretence around invitations or excuses. A standing order, once a week, and sometimes more. What might be called an opportunity to let off rapidly growing steam._ **

**_We had sex on the kitchen island yesterday._** Oh yeah, I remember that day." Tony looked back down at the diary with a grin and Ziva shuffled across the bed to sit next to him. He held the book closed jokingly. "Hey, I'm trying to read here."

"There is nothing graphic in there, Tony."

"You sure?"

As outwardly sexual as Ziva had been back then, she knew it wasn’t often she’d felt a need to write explicitly in private. It was something she enjoyed doing as a public activity: watching the look on Tony’s face as she challenged him in a way that didn’t happen very often. "Fairly. You should hope not - I do not know who at NCIS read these. For your sake, you should pray Gibbs has not."

The thought was enough to make Tony almost visibly shudder, even now living thousands of miles away.

He turned further through the diary.

**_"This particular case has been taking its toll. Naturally, Tony came over again last night. Stayed over, again, last night. The more this carries on the more I am aware it cannot last. I know all of us still have a constant mind on the idea of Gibbs coming back and where that would leave us._ **

**_But it is not just Gibbs. This - all of this, him, is getting too comfortable. At Mossad we are taught to never rely on another person like that. I am starting to lose that power. Noticing myself more and more seeking out his attention and affection._ **

**_Then there is the small matter of his secret. The one he does not realise I am aware of, even as he catches my eye as he disappears off with his phone to his ear and I feel distinctly naive."_ **

Tony’s voice trailed off and Ziva got the sense he felt guilty, even now all of these years later.

“It is funny to think back to that summer. How soon things happened after Gibbs had left.”

“Like we’d been waiting for the coast to be clear.” Tony smirked at the memory, though his expression was still a little more thoughtful than that. He sighed, and it lifted a little more. “It’s so weird nobody knew. I mean, we never talked about keeping it a secret. Or what it meant, really. But we did.”

“I think that is because deep down both of us knew it was never going to last. Even without the Jeanne situation – like I wrote, I think for me it had an expiration date. Where I was then, I was.. not prepared for how things were playing out. I thought one or both of us would get hurt if it continued.”

“Well, that’s-” Tony stopped himself with another sigh, one which implored Ziva to reframe the topic a little.

“It is not as if _nobody_ knew. Mossad – I told you, yes?”

The smile was back – this one tinged with mischief. “Mossad didn’t know, they just made assumptions.”

“You do not believe my father would have had ways of finding evidence? Phone records..”

“I’d like to _hope_ he didn’t.” He raised his eyebrows and Ziva laughed as she looked back at the diary, thinking about the mood around Mossad at that time. They could see it too: the way she was pulling away from the organisation and towards NCIS. Towards Gibbs, even in his absence, and into Tony’s orbit.

"The ones after this from later that year may be strange for you to read. That time with Jeanne..” she stopped talking to look at his expression sideways, “-to be honest, I was never sure at the time how much you were aware of with regards to my feelings. I realised you likely had some inkling later on after she had left, but.."

"I didn't know. Not for a while. Maybe I should've, maybe it was.." Tony exhaled. "Naive? That it didn't occur to me for a while."

"It is not as though I saw it coming. Even after that summer, I.. well, I was young. I had never really been in love before. The idea that it was happening with you of all people was difficult to stomach."

"No offence taken."

Ziva chuckled. "I do not especially remember what those diaries say, but I am sure they will, if nothing else, embarrass me greatly."

“A blush from the great Ziva David, hm?”

The tone made her roll her eyes as she felt herself smile. “I did not say _blush_.”

“It’s what I heard..”

“Open your next diary, DiNozzo.”

* * *

Ziva hadn’t been expecting the next one so soon.

Tony read that diary silently. One she had written in retrospect - hazy memories of a summer when she had barely been present for half of the things that had happened to her. She watched him as he read to himself, seeing his eyes carefully scan the pages and the almost discernible concentration on his face as though he was stopping himself from getting angry about what she’d been through, over a decade later.

One particular passage made him take pause, and she saw his eyes go to flick up to her and then stop.

“This.. did you mean it? Back then?”

“What in particular?”

**_"For weeks, there was darkness. I had stopped counting the horrors I endured. And then the monster lifted the hood - the light spilled in, and I saw my friend. My heart saw him as if for the first time, and I knew I could not live without him."_ **

The words cut through her like a knife, memory flooding her head of the look in his eyes when she’d first seen him. She cleared her throat. "That was true. It was as true then as it is now. And you know there have been times when I have.. tried, desperately, to do so. It has never been possible for me."

“Even after everything that had happened? I.. god, when I went to find you I didn’t imagine that it’d ever..” Tony’s voice faded out again and one of his fingers ran over the page as his head tipped upwards.

“I could not believe my eyes, when I saw you. Not in a symbolic way – I really thought I was hallucinating. I think if you carry on reading I would say as such. Not just because I was so sure of what lay ahead of me, but because after what had happened I am not sure I would have ever comprehended the idea you would think about doing something like that for me.”

Tony looked back down at the page.

**_“For the first second after our eyes met, I thought I was dreaming. The truth is sometimes harder to comprehend, and the implications of seeing him in front of me after events of the spring were too much to understand on top of was happening. The fact that this man, this person I had thought I’d known more than most people I’d ever met, would do this. Even when it would almost certainly end in death. I did not ever see that coming.”_ **

It was almost sombre, the note in his voice as he read. It was not something they ever spoke out – Ziva supposed that was inevitable, but she thought her feelings in that split-second moment were indicative of their relationship on the whole. The capability Tony had always had to take her by surprise: to show determination and care and empathy beyond anything she’d experienced before, putting himself on the line time and time again for her benefit. It was as difficult to comprehend back then as it still could be today.

He put the diary to one side and kissed her, his hands abandoning the book to cradle her face. Sometimes, that said more than enough.

* * *

The pile of diaries that Tony had collected was dwindling by this point as they reached the end, which in itself was enough to make a bubble of anxiety rise in Ziva’s stomach. It calmed a little when she picked the next one from the pile and saw the date.

She remembered the particular case well, and the period of time it belonged to. The young sister of a naval captain had gone missing, and though she’d been found safe and well a few days later, the interactions Ziva had had with the captain had stayed with her.

She pored over the pages and settled after she saw his name, remembering why the case had so strongly affected her. She began to read out loud, ** _“The way she speaks about her sister has hit a chord, as it was always likely to so soon after Tali's birthday. She will have dates like this too in the future._**

**_I could feel Tony's eyes on me so I turned away to face her straight on, pushing the thought of her away and not allowing it to cloud my assessment of the situation. Not everyone is as connected as meets the eye._ **

**_I cannot get his gift for Tali's birthday out of my head. I am sure he must realise the significance that it holds to me, even if he is acting coy about it. I know that he himself is not a stranger to the death of a loved one but even so, it is the type of gesture I have not received from anyone before in such a way. Something that is so simple, but felt as though he understood._ **

**_Her husband held her hand the entire time we were talking.”_ **

Ziva had thought this diary might provide a happier interlude, and it was, but it was, also bittersweet. She smiled. "I think very fondly of this fall."

“We used to spend so much time together.”

“Yes, we did.”

“Hold on, isn’t that the case where…” Tony’s tone suddenly changed from wistful as something crossed his mind and he grabbed the diary from Ziva as she tried to catch up. “Uh…. aHA! Yes! _**Went to the boyfriend’s family farm to question, but he fled. I eventually caught up with him but not before ending up rolling in a pile of manure. Tony took a picture before I could stop him and is now holding out on it. If he thinks I am going to let it go, he does not know me at all.”** _Tony read the passage in a delighted voice with a hint of an accented impression as she tried to take the diary back off him playfully. “Honestly the funniest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Well, I am glad it could brighten somebody’s day. And the evidence is gone now, too, so we can pretend it never happened.”

Tony raised his eyebrows at Ziva, and though she was almost certain he was bluffing she turned to sit in front of him to look him in the eye. “If you are tyring to tell me that there is another copy of that photo somewhere in this apartment, then you need to speak now.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Do not challenge me, Tony. If I find one…”

“You’ll do what? We have a kid in the house. You have to set a good example.” He shrugged smugly, smile on face, as Ziva leaned up on her hands to lean into him.

“I’m not sure, but you are not going to like it.”

She kissed him, an instinct she would never bore of following through with, and his hands rose up to pull her fully onto his lap. She indulged for a few moments as her tongue explored his mouth, enjoying the familiar way his hands poked up the bottom of her shirt to settle on the small of her back.

“Um-um.” Ziva hummed pulling back, watching the way he tried to follow. “Later. I want us to finish these.”

Tony sighed in objection as she clambered off him and sat back down next to him, her heartbeat speeding up in a different way when she saw that only two diaries were left. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to imagine what they contained, and she felt herself fiddling with her hair and scratching her brow as Tony picked one up. He didn’t open it, watching her face, before putting it down on his lap.

"I actually got my dates a little wrong, that one wasn't what I was looking for."

"No?"

"I was thinking about before, when I showed you the picture of my mom.” He was still watching her face, the keen way he observed her reactions to things that happened. A habit he’d always had, even when they first met. “That day always stuck in my head. I hadn't planned it, obviously - the picture was a surprise, but it was total spur of the moment to show it to you. It was a big deal for me back then, to say pretty much anything about her. But I wanted to share that with you."

Ziva felt a pang of understanding. "I remember writing as such. You had always been coy about that time in your life, and the fact you opened up to me so readily is what encouraged me to do the same."

“I think it was important. That fall. I feel like… I don’t know, I think we were honest with each other. We used to spend so much time trying to hide.”

Ziva remembered so vividly how that fall had felt like a tipping point, and how circumstance had once again intervened to send them hurtling in the wrong direction.

Her gaze stuck again on the unopened diary on his lap, and Tony’s eyes followed it.

“Y’know,” he began talking slowly, his voice soft, “it’s alright if you don’t wanna read them right now. Or ever.”

“I do. I am just not entirely sure what they say. So many of these times have become a blur in retrospect.”

Tony’s hand came up to the side of her face and stroked some hair behind her ear as she looked at her hands.

“In a way, I think that is a good thing. To be able to keep some distance between myself back then and myself now.”

“I don’t want you to read these and use it as a reason to feel guilty or down.” His voice was low and comforting and reminded Ziva of the way he’d talk to Tali when she’d had a nightmare. It was instinctive in him now; she wasn’t sure he was even aware he was doing it. She lifted her head to meet his eyes.

“I know. I am not going to do that, when you read them properly. But I do want you to understand all of this, even if it is in the past now. You must still have questions that I am not able to answer fully.”

“Everything I need to know, I already do. What you want to show me beyond that is totally up to you.”

She nodded at his tone, offering a smile to return his, before she picked up the diary from his lap.

A loose bound collection of papers had been stuck to the inside of an empty notebook cover. Ziva remembered doing it, the sense of catharsis she’d got from adding the pages to the rest of the years.

She looked, again, for mentions of his name. Signposts through the rambles and self-criticisms and the occasional note in Hebrew. She found, halfway through, notes she actually remembered writing. Curled up on a bench on the porch as the sun rose.

She cleared her throat and looked at him for confirmation. He offered a small smile.

**_"I know I have done the most possible to discourage Tony from even trying to engage with me after his visit got postponed. Most people would have given up even trying to call, by now, let alone the lengths he has gone to to track me down._ **

**_But he came. I did not expect that. Maybe I should have._ **

**_He seemed a little shell-shocked at first, the way he was looking at me. I am not sure if something about my appearance has altered in the months since we have seen each other, or if it is the way I am looking at him. I know I could not stop staring in the first hours after he arrived, before the inevitability of falling into each other’s arms. Trying to see if there was a way to see inside his head. To understand why, even now, he finds it in himself to put in so much effort to try and make me feel better._ **

**_He has been quieter than I imagined. Not silent – Tony has never been accused of that, but I supposed I expected him to talk constantly. Oftentimes, I catch him staring into space. I suppose it is understandable that the more time passes the more I am making it hard for him to find words to say._ **

**_I left him sleeping. I have been sat here for an hour, trying to find the courage to go back inside and tell him he should leave soon._ **

**_It feels cruel, though I know every second is making it harder for the both of us. Five days, it has been, and I want to remain grateful for that in the future when I look back on this time. Any longer, I am being selfish. Any longer, I am only hurting him more._ **

**_I am sure it must be frustrating to him to see me like this. His continued protestations against my guilt and self-loathing are kind, even if they are falling on deaf ears. He deserves better than this. And, truthfully, I know that if I am sincere about wanting to process all of this, I could not do it with him around. So much of the last decade of my life is wrapped up in him: a reminder of the things I have done. Things I have done to him, that he has inexplicably forgiven me for in ways I glossed over at the time but now seem incredible._ **

**_I know, with absolute certainty, that I could not love anyone else. I see it as an act of service to that now to give him the chance to start again.”_ **

The words tasted bitter as they left her mouth, so rooted in faulty logic and a person Ziva tried hard every day not to revert to. She closed the diary but kept her finger holding the page as she thought the words over before turning to Tony. He was watching her intently, waiting for her reaction.

“This is what you said – about trying to hide. I am not sure why I became so convinced it was the right thing to do. What happened with my father, and Ilan, in the end it became a reminder to me that it was the way things happened in my life. The way they would always happen, no matter how much I tried to free myself of Mossad and everything else from my past that was connected to it. I think I began to feel as though it was proof I did not belong in the world that you did. That my experiences were so different, and that inevitably by being around me it would cause the same problems to happen to you too.”

“You know what I would’ve said to that, if you’d told me back then. The idea that me just being around you was going to hurt me is just..” Tony sighed, and though Ziva still could recognise the hurt she’d directly caused, she also understood his rejection of the idea that she was at fault for the outside pressures on their relationship. “I wish you would’ve told me. I don’t know that I could’ve convinced you, back then, but I would’ve tried.”

“Reading this is.. of all of them, this is the one that feels the most strange.” Ziva could hear for herself her mood at that time - her thoughts seemed choppy and contradictory, not quite in sync. Absent and self-deprecating and almost delusional in the way she detached herself from the situation. As though having to be apart from him was some kind of inevitability (when now, of course, she could see how impossible it ever was). "I think I was around 2 days pregnant when I wrote this. Even the idea of that is.. impossible to comprehend."

"You know how much Tali loves the unexpected."

"If I had known then what I know now.." Ziva stopped herself. "Well, I did know. I have always known. It just got lost for a little while."

"It's my job to remind you."

"That is my job, too. To remind you I do not think that way anymore. And I am not going anywhere." She closed the diary firmly and put her hands on top of his, holding them in her fingers. “I want to read this one with you eventually. Even if it takes ten years, I want to read it with you.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“And this one, this-” Ziva pulled the other diary onto her lap. “This one is the same. I want you to understand what was going through my head in those weeks before I returned. The emotions were so different from when you first left, and of course Tali was there too, but it is the same idea. I have a lot of regret that you were so in the dark. Out of necessity, to an extent, but also in times I was not able to share it with you.”

“You wanna read that one now?”

Ziva flicked through the final diary. It was only half-filled in. “The end, perhaps. I think I remember what it said, but I would like to read it to you.”

“I’m listening.”

It was a simple phrase but the weight was heavy, and Ziva realised how quiet he was. Letting her lead the conversation, tell what she wanted to. Gratefulness filled her chest again at the way she’d managed to get so lucky finding someone like him, and she leaned him to kiss him.

“What was that for?”

She didn’t answer, instead looking down at the diary as he frowned in amused confusion.

**_"The final time I will write in this set of journals, fourteen years on. I intend to buy myself a new one when I arrive in Paris. A new chapter."_ **

Ziva remembered that it had been Tony, in fact, who had bought her first Paris journal. He hadn't realised that's what he did until she told him, but he had gone crazy in an office store on his way home from work after Ziva had told him she'd got a job.

**_“I feel guilty, for feeling hesitant. The two of them deserve better than somebody who could have doubts about going home to them. But it is not them that I doubt, of course - I could never doubt that with the very essence of who I am, I need to be with them. I doubt what happens once I am there. I doubt my abilities to be what they need. To live up to expectations._ **

**_I do not know how I will react when I see the two of them. That uncertainty is a source of fear - so long past a time where I had complete trust in my own mind and behaviours._ **

**_Beyond all of this, bubbling beneath the surface, is an excitement unlike anything I have felt before. I cannot get them out of my head on a usual day but today it is as if they are sat on my shoulders as I take every breath. Even through the fear I have, and the uncertainty about what lies ahead, I know I cannot wait to see them. I think it will take a while for me to accept that it is real, and not just another dream.”_ **

Ziva’s gaze stuck on the final sentence as it ended halfway down the page, the rest ahead lying blank. It was apt, in a way, that the diary had been unfinished.

“I felt like that for a while. I am not sure how much you remember of that time when I got back – things were so chaotic and busy and difficult, but whenever I was alone I would feel like pinching myself. Even on the worst days it felt like..” she thought for a moment, “a release. To be with you both.”

“I think you handled it well, considering.”

“Considering, considering.” It was a funny word, one which Ziva was certain got mentioned more than any other in the first few months after she’d returned. Tali was doing OK at school, considering. Ziva had slept a good couple of hours one night, considering. And, on days when she’d been particularly plagued with self-doubt, she’d thought Tony loved her a lot, considering. “It is hard to believe we are the same people we were then. Even just in the time since I have got home, let alone all of the years before.”

“It was a learning curve, for all of us. Still is most days, right? I mean, god.. when I think back to how I was when you first got back. I was terrified.”

“I remember. You tried hard to mask it, but that has never worked with me.”

He smiled sheepishly. “I think I was under the impression that if I acted like I was in control of the situation we’d kinda struggle through it off the back of it. Didn’t work, though, obviously. But we got through it anyway; the three of us.”

“The three of us _together_ , not one of us trying to drag the other two.”

“That’s what I think about, looking at all of these.” He flicked through one of the diaries as though a demonstration. “I mean, I know it was selective, but so much of this stuff that’s happened has been about how the two of us have done it together.”

It hit the nail on the head of what Ziva had been thinking as they’d read – how much of her impressions of day-to-day life inevitably were wrapped up in their wider story. Even a cursory glance had been illuminating: how often discussion of a case could get bogged down in her own feelings. The way she saw developments in hers and Tony’s relationship reflected in what was happening at work, as though they had their own secret path being followed alongside work that nobody else knew of.

“To think, reading them. Each of these things happening contributed to getting us where we are."

"Do you ever think about that? Not just big events, but smaller ones too. If.. say, Gibbs hadn't retired that summer. How much would that have changed what happened between us?"

“I remember when I was pregnant, there was a period of time in which I could not get the situation with Michael out of my head. How if I had not allowed myself to be.. manipulated, then-” Ziva cut herself, off decade-old resentment and frustration bubbling. “I connected so much of what had happened back to that root cause. Wondered if I had put one step different, how different things could have been in current reality.” Tony nodded as she spoke but he was muted, more content to listen. "But I did not want to read these to.. question, or regret things from the past. Roads we have not travelled."

"Then why did you?"

"Because I think.. this, all of these stories, are what got us here. The things I wrote in here - times I was unsure of where we stood, where your intentions were unclear or when I knew I had pushed you away or where things had conspired to stand between us. If these did not exist, then you and I would not be sat here having this conversation."

“I wish we had more stuff like this. More photos, more anything, any way of remembering it all. I hate that that got taken away from us by everything that happened.”

Ziva thought of the few photos she’d managed to stow away and bring to her cabin for safekeeping that now were framed dotted around the house, and the others that she’d had to leave behind at the farmhouse when she and Tali left in the dead of night.

“We don’t need all of that, Ziva. So long as we have this, that’s all that matters.” He signalled between them in a way that made her smile again, feeling the familiar pleasant lurch in her chest. She put her hand on his arm.

“One thing I did not say enough in these diaries is how lucky I was to have you. How lucky I _still_ am to have you. I think sometimes you are unaware the effect that the things you do can have. Even when we were just at NCIS, before much of this happened, it was so often you that got us through difficult situations.”

“You know I always thought the same. Right? What you said about when Gibbs was gone, about having my back. I always felt that. Even though I could be like you sometimes, a little..”

“Goat-headed?”

“Pig. But I was gonna say stubborn.” Tony chuckled as his hand rubbed her cheek. “Even when I did that thing where I tried to act like I wasn’t bothered by what was happening, I still appreciated that.”

“I know you did.”

The tinge of earnest in his smile faded into genuine affection and humour. "I'm gonna remember for myself how I felt at these times. Easier said than done - my memory isn't anything like yours. I should've been the one writing stuff down."

“That is nothing to be ashamed of – it is common as you get older.”

Tony scoffed, his face changing further as Ziva smirked. “God, it never lasts with you, does it? I thought you were being nice to me.”

“I am, I am.” Ziva put her arm over his shoulder and pulled him in for a kiss to his cheek which he wiped away in fake anger. She enjoyed the dissolving of tension after a discussion like this: so different from the old days, when it was a distraction. Knowing they’d revisit these diaries another time, offering more opportunity for insight and conversation.

There was an exhale of breath shared between them, as though both coming down from the heights. Tony grabbed her hand and tapped them, joined, off his leg a few times.

"You judged McGee so hard for his books about our relationship, when all along.."

"This is _hardly_ the same thing. I did not turn these into bestsellers behind your back."

"More's the pity. We could've retired to the Bahamas, some of the stuff in these."

“I told you, it is hardly salacious.”

“I wouldn’t go that far yet. Where’s the diary from the first time we went undercover?”

“Ah, see, that is what I was waiting for.”

“Can you blame me for being interested?”

“No. Although you did a good job of acting like you were interested in the other ones.” Ziva’s joke lightened the mood, and Tony grinned before leaning in to fade it against her lips.


End file.
